


The Weight We Carry

by thegayestflute



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Angst, Background Victuuri - Freeform, F/F, Timeskips, and confused, coming to terms with sexuality, first chapter is a lil short but they're gonna get longer and gayer, is that a tag, mainly mila/sara, michele crispino is not portrayed as a dick for once, mila is rly angsty, self hatred, whole thing is mila pov, yuri is smol and angerey
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-05-21
Updated: 2017-05-31
Packaged: 2018-11-03 04:33:54
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,589
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10959744
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thegayestflute/pseuds/thegayestflute
Summary: The weights fell heavy on her already overworked body and she couldn’t quite move with the same grace she had always tried her hardest to exert. She could let go for a few seconds before she was forced to yet again bear them as they were attached to her like some kind of medieval ball and chain. It reminded Mila a little too much of the weight in her chest that gave her bad posture whenever she wasn’t thinking about sitting up; the weight that first settled within her when at 12 years old, she had looked into Anna Mikhailov’s pretty green eyes and realized with a sudden and striking clarity, I am…not straight, and hadn’t left since.





	1. Contentment

**Author's Note:**

> Hello friends!! This is my first fic here so please let me know what you think. I'm gonna be inconsistent about posting chapters bc that's who I am but I'll do my best to update as frequently as possible.

Mila was a professional athlete, and as such she was expected to maintain a certain physique. In order to even _think_ about landing her quads let alone actually doing it, she had to be in prime physical condition. And well, with the amount of junk food she consumed when Yakov was looking the other direction…needless to say Mila did her fair share of _extra_ working out. She thought about that stubborn fat that clung to her inner thighs no matter how many miles she put in on her morning runs. That little bit of pudge in one of the least noticeable places used to make her go crazy, doing everything she could to annihilate it like it would someone let her  _annihilate_ her competition on ice. It never really worked. That little detail of her body had stuck there, a reminder that she’d always be second best, or as Yakov liked to call it – first loser, for the rest of her career. She’d hated that part of herself for as long as she knew, and the daily reminder had pushed her to work harder, to stay hungry, to strive for the best and nothing but the best.

And thus, as the sound of a standard marimba ringtone pierced the cool morning air, Mila forcibly dragged herself out of a pile of blankets, feeling the chill penetrate her skin and chill her right down to her bones. Russia was a cold, unforgiving country and even in the early fall Mila’s breath froze and hung in the air, growing into steadily bigger clouds as her pace increased and it grew harder to breathe. After a few years of the same routine, Mila felt like running shouldn’t still be so damn hard, but then again, she’d been staring at her singular gold medal across her bed for the same amount of time, and that hadn’t changed either. The motivation that that singular gold medal had once held, the same kind of motivation as her stubborn thighs gave her was beginning to slip away.

Huffing and puffing her way through the run, Mila often let her mind wander. She would think about the weather, the animals she seldom encountered, the cars that drove past her on the secluded road she traveled, likely regular people headed off to their jobs as teachers or bankers or doctors. She thought about those people a lot. She wondered what it was like to feel regular, mediocre - _content_. Mostly on these morning runs though, Mila thought about herself. She wasn’t Yuri. It had taken her 2 years in the senior division before she was able to claw her way onto the podium, winning her singular gold medal a few years later due to the fact that a broken leg had knocked Sara Crispino out right before The Grand Prix of 2016. She certainly wasn’t Victor either, because surely her case of medals would _disgust_ him. With him there was no “good enough”. Contentment simply didn’t exist in the world of fucking Victor Nikivorof. Deep down, Mila knew those medals should disgust her too, really. But every morning as she woke up to the same singular gold medal taunting her from across her room and ran the same 5 miles without her breath-clouds getting any smaller, she couldn’t find any way to describe herself other than content. And that - the whole being content thing - was the bane of Mila’s existence. If she really thought about it, waking up first thing in the morning to her medals probably wasn’t good for her mental health. Then again, neither were these morning runs.

Mila let out a puff of air that probably would have been more of a bitter laugh if she could actually breathe properly, which would be nice, no thanks to fucking Yakov. When she’d turned fifteen her coach had taken notice of the teeny-tiny amount of weight she’d put on with puberty. It was a subtle change really, just a girl’s body growing and developing. Even Lilia had said so. He’d made her do the extra workouts anyway. It was either this or weight training, Yakov has said. She hadn’t wanted to run at first, opting for a later alarm-clock and a workout that wouldn’t require Mila to immerse herself in the frigid cold of Russia every damn morning. But Mila had tried weight training, and to say the least it hadn’t quite worked out. Regardless of how much she hated the cold air, hated her perpetually large breath-clouds, _hated_ the space it gave her mind to wander to a place she didn’t want it to, Mila was _never_ trying weight training again. The weights fell heavy on her already overworked body and she couldn’t quite move with the same grace she had always tried her hardest to exert. She could let go for a few seconds before she was forced to yet again bear them as they were attached to her like some kind of medieval ball and chain. It reminded Mila a little too much of the weight in her chest that gave her bad posture whenever she wasn’t thinking about sitting up; the weight that first settled within her when at 12 years old, she had looked into Anna Mikhailov’s pretty green eyes and realized with a sudden and striking clarity, _I am…not straight_ , and hadn’t left since.

Somedays Mila would try to ignore the weights. She’d imagine the strain of her metaphorical arms didn’t exist- that the weights seemingly glued to her hands were gone, and had left her free to instead pick up a paintbrush, held delicately between her fingers. She could let the world know how she felt through art on a canvas. Simple, careful dots or violent slashing colors. How she craved to liberate herself through something other than pained grunts of exertion from weightlifting for just a little too long. Alas, the canvas-and-paintbrush ideal was wholly unrealistic, and soon enough the waves of reality would come crashing down upon Mila’s conscious, drowning her in an overwhelming feeling of melancholy mediocrity. With weary muscles, she’d bear the weights yet again.

On other days when Mila was feeling particularly brave, she’d try lifting the weights– overcoming the challenge they presented. It never worked. She didn’t get water breaks from accepting her sexuality. Her tired arms strained until they could no longer take it, and then then her worse-for-the-wear hands would hang limply at her sides once more.

Most days, Mila settled for an in-between. She held with weights without trying too hard to lift them or too hard to let them go. She just let them exist, settling in the pit of her stomach and dragging her down to the ice with a little extra gravity whenever she flubbed a particularly hard jump during practice. It wasn’t a good solution, or a solution at all really, but what other option did she have?

Mila’s breath-clouds dissipated just as quickly they were exhaled and her thighs screamed nearly as loud as her mind often did, crying out with silent words. Mila felt her weights settle somewhere deep within and began her day with the same achingly familiar routine under which she had never been quite good enough.

 


	2. The Trials We Face

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This is just a whole lotta angst whoops

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to y'all for the love I got on chapter one! I'm officially not in school anymore *finger guns* which means I now have A LOT of free time and should hopefully be updating pretty often from now on.

Even after waking up at four-in-the-freakin-morning for the dreaded run, Mila was somehow late to practice. As she entered the rink to the other skaters already warming up, she yelled a quick apology to Yakov and started lacing up her skates, angrily looping the string through either side and pulling so tight Mila hoped she wouldn’t be able to feel her toes. She watched as Victor landed a perfect quad salchow across the rink, as Yuri stretched, contorting himself into probably inhuman positions with a bored expression on his face and his phone held in his hand, probably snapchatting Otabek or something.

Mila shed her jacket and wobbled on too-tight skates over to the edge of the rink. She anchored herself – weights lodged in her heart – and skated slow, lazy circles around the ice. Which, she might add, was a _regular_ warmup for a skater. Unlike Yuri, who became a contortionist. Yuri, with his abundance of gold medals, thoughtless grace, and confidence that she’d always worked so hard to live up to. Her best friend Yuri –  who had finished his strange catlike stretches and joined her to warm up on the ice.

He caught up to her quickly. “Man- you should’ve seen Yakov’s face when you walked in about 30 seconds late. I thought he was going to literally explode.”

“ _ Literally? _ ” she made a face at him, “Damn I’m glad that didn’t happen. Gross. Old man guts all over us.” Yuri rolled his eyes at her, and then promptly shoved Mila into one of the barriers. She spluttered, feeling the pull of the tight laces against her legs and the gravity of the weight she carried threatening to bring her down.

“Fuck you Yuri!” she yelled, eliciting an exasperated “ _ Language, Mila!”  _ from Yakov sitting in the stands.

“You know Mila, once in a while it’s okay to be NOT an asshole.” Yuri called as she regained her footing, unsure on how to start skating when the heavier-than-usual weights kept her from dancing across the ice like her friend.

“Says you!” she called back, “Isn’t that like what you’re known for?” Yuri skated another lap, stopping in beside her, long blonde hair falling around his shoulders.

“Shut up.  _ I’m  _ sixteen. Which means I’m allowed to be a moody teenager. You have no excuse old hag!” At that, Mila gasped dramatically and put a hand to her chest, wounded. He cracked a smile at her gesture, and Mila was grateful for a little relief from the ever-present weight her friend’s dumb face provided.

“You did NOT just say that. For your information, I am a youthful nineteen!” Yuri, the little shit, just wiggled his eyebrows at her. He grabbed her hand, pulling Mila and her heavy weights along with him.

And so was life. Run, exchange insults with Yuri, practice, eat, sleep, repeat.

Gravity had had a tendency to tug and pull on her body as she thought too much about the issue at hand of her…tendencies. The weights banged on the insides of her ribs, leaving no wounds there but manifesting themselves on her feet; subject to her skates tied excessively tight so that she could do as much as keep her balance. As apathy started to overcome her, Mila flung herself into her art wholeheartedly, aggressively, throwing herself from one side of the rink to the other. She felt her toes crack and bleed under the pressure of her skates pressing into them, strung too tight for her body to bear but never tight enough to counter the constant weightlifting battle in her mind. After practice one day, Yakov had beckoned her to him and complimented her.

“I love your passion this season Mila. We’re going to make that your theme,” he’d said to her excitedly. Passion might not have been quite the word for what she was feeling. Maybe passion was what Yakov saw. To her, skating had recently felt more like desperation to escape the realms of content. She was drowning, swimming for a surface she would never find where Yuri and Victor floated on life rafts towards land.

She skated to piano music. Not to light waltzes to which she could dance along like a fairy floating over the ice, either. Hard, dissonant chords where she could leave large slashes across the rink and emit power, confidence. Hardly what she actually felt, but it was what Mila preferred. If the weight of the she secrets kept dug her blades in harder than necessary, she’d call it performance. On the ice, she could hide her broken self behind a façade of unstoppable determination.

The one gold medal that she still woke to every morning, finding herself involuntarily smiling at her accomplishment, haunted her. One gold medal should never be enough and _yet_ it seemed to satisfy her as she grew more lackadaisical in her daily life and her morning-run-breath-clouds appeared to grow in size exponentially. Disgusting. Mila tormented herself, lacing her skates so tight that her feet grew as numb as she wished her heart would be. The ever observant, caring, asshole Fairy of Russia has  _of course_ noticed.

“Mila, you  _ idiot _ ,” he’d said with a sad understanding in his voice, “Something weighing you down?” As t he brattiest kid in the industry, of course Yuri had come into her life as some sick version of her own personal guardian angel. He understood Mila, could almost read her mind, but could only stand behind a glass barrier and watch her grapple with life's challenges on her own. Shocked into silence, Mila had wordlessly let him ice the bruises along her heels and bandage the cuts on her toes more gently than she'd thought possible of someone so angry. She’d nodded mutely as he said to her sternly, “Look, Bitch. You better take care of yourself, okay? Believe it or not, as my only friend, I do actually care about you.”  She’d blinked at him. 

“What about Otabek? Isn’t he your friend?” Mila had asked, clueless. As Yuri’s eyes widened in way that should have been comical, Mila couldn’t bring herself to laugh. Apparently, Yuri was carrying a few weights of his own.

If possible, the bond between her and Yuri grew even stronger. As Mila re-laced her skates tighter each morning, Yuri would just sigh at her worriedly but never ask questions. She could feel the weights on her shoulders. Where she used to hold herself with confidence, Mila caved in on herself, weight pushing so hard from every angle that her breathing grew shallow and ragged. She skated with such false vigor that she was afraid the walls surrounding her would crack open and she would be left a broken mess of inadequate satisfaction.

Every day during her run, Mila’s heartstrings lifted the weights while her rationale reminded her,  _ no one can know _ , that her career,  _ will be  _ **_over_ ** _. _

She grew desperate. So desperate, in fact, that she did the unthinkable.

 

 

Mila started flirting with Georgi.

 

 

And poor, heartbroken Georgi was happy to reciprocate. A quick peck on the cheek that made bile rise to her throat from a messy-haired, sweaty Mila who was clinging on to the rink barrier to keep herself from falling, and well, the naïve man was decidedly in love.

_Yeah right,_ Mila’s conscious whispered to her, _even if you were_ _interested in him, no one will ever love **you**. Second best and happy with it? Soon even he will realize how worthless you are. _

Another few pounds piled onto the countless weights already crushing her spirit.

When Georgi showed up to practice the next day with flowers in his arms and an invitation to dinner on his lips, Mila accepted without hesitation. And when he leaned in for a kiss at said dinner, she felt hot tears drip down her cheeks, smearing makeup she’d spent an hour on and washing away the mask of someone else that she had painted on with it.

“I’m sorry,” Mila had whispered, hearing her own voice break under the overwhelming weight that had chose this time to settle in her lungs, “I c-can’t do this.”

Mila had hobbled out of the restaurant on broken feet with streaks of black dripping from her eyes and a resolution to call in sick for tomorrow's practice. After all, she’d already won her gold.

**Author's Note:**

> Hey pals find me at pidgeseyelash.tumblr.com it's mostly voltron stuff over there.


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